


Other Ways Home

by obstinate_as_an_allegory



Series: Other Ways Home [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4783067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinate_as_an_allegory/pseuds/obstinate_as_an_allegory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night Sirius leaves home, from Mrs Potter's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Ways Home

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my goodness I accidentally strayed into Marauders fandom SEND HELP.

It’s been a long while since she has been woken like this: the slight squeak of the door and pad of bare feet on the carpet in the doorway; James, sounding younger than sixteen with sleep, mumbles ‘Mum?’

Charlus doesn’t stir, snoring heavily beside her, so she blinks herself more awake and whispers ‘What is it, darling?’

 ‘Yeah, um. The thing is – Sirius is here.’

 Dorea frowns, and realises with some resignation that this is going to need, at the very least, a more sustained discussion than they can have here without waking Charlus, so she reaches for the robe slung over a chair and carefully wriggles out of bed. Shuffling out into the corridor, she registers the racket of rain outside beating on the tiled roof. She frowns at James, who is scratching at his chaotic hair with one hand.

 ‘When you say Sirius is here…?’

 ‘He just arrived. He’s – left home.’ James shuffles his feet, looking a little awkward and very worried.

 That wakes her up a bit. ‘He’s left?’ she echoes.

 Well, that is something. She’s never said it in front of the boys, because you just _don’t_ , but she’s often worried about the Blacks. It was no secret how furious and embarrassed Walburga had been when her eldest had been sorted into Gryffindor rather than Slytherin, and Sirius is always carelessly flippant about the screaming rows that accompany his every school holiday homecoming, but he takes every invitation to spend the holidays at their house or the Lupins’ with an enthusiasm always tinged with relief.

He is a good boy, for all his sharp edges. He’s a good friend to James, for all that they _certainly_ egg one another on into ever more ridiculous schemes for mischief. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone except her husband but yes: of course, she has worried about that boy.

‘How did he get here?’ she hisses, and James shoots an anxious glance back down the corridor to his own room.

 ‘I think he got the Knight Bus. He hasn’t actually said very much, but, Mum, I think those mad bastards have done something to him…’

 ‘Language.’

 ‘Sorry.’ James shuffles his feet again. ‘He doesn’t look too good, Mum,’ he mutters.

 She nods, and pats him lightly on the arm. ‘I’ll have a look at him. Maybe you should find him something to eat? There are fresh bread rolls in the cupboard.’

 He nods, a little wide-eyed from dealing with this, and he clatters off down the stairs.

 She pads down the hall and slips through the open door into her son’s room. There, curled up on James’ bed, is the very wet and bedraggled form of Sirius Black.

 He seems to be asleep, he doesn’t look up when she comes in, but he is also shivering. James, because her son can be very tender but perhaps not always very sensible, has draped a hoodie over his shoulders with the hood obscuring half his face but has clearly not managed to get him to change out of that soaking wet t-shirt. She sighs. She can hear James crashing about in the kitchen below, but Sirius hasn’t stirred.

 She lowers herself to sit on the edge of the bed and very gently touches the sleeping boy on the shoulder.

 The effect is immediate: he startles violently awake, twisting himself awkwardly upwards on one elbow and gasping, eyes staring wide and hard through his dripping fringe. It’s a second or two, she thinks, before he realises where he is, and then another moment before he recognises her. There’s a bruise under his eye and a smudge of blood on the side of his neck. He hasn’t got his breath back yet, but he still tries to plaster on a charming smile.

 ‘Mrs Potter!’ he rasps. ‘What a – joy to wake up to –‘

 ‘Hello, Sirius,’ she says gently, trying to keep the sadness and _anger_ at the state of him out of her smile. ‘This is a nice surprise.’

 ‘Sorry I didn’t wait for an invitation, Mrs Potter,’ he says, slowly bringing his breathing and his tense muscles back under control.

 ‘Don’t be silly,’ she tells him. ‘You don’t need an invitation.’

 

-/-

 

She’s nearly finished cleaning his back and dousing him with Dittany essence but hasn’t quite got as far as finding him a dry shirt to wear when James comes back in. He’s halfway through a cheery list of everything he could find in the pantry when he looks at Sirius and stops dead. Dorea feels him take a hesitant breath, and then he breezes in and takes up his nonsense chatter again, only slightly strained.

When she goes to look through the airing cupboard for a clean pair of James’ pyjamas, she tells him to come with her and help. Downstairs, he suddenly looks sick and guilty, and she pulls him into a hug.

 ‘I’m sorry, I just…’ he mumbles, and she shushes him.

 ‘He’ll be alright,’ she assures him, because _physically_ he will be.

 ‘I know, it’s just, Merlin’s _pants_ , Mum, they’ve been torturing him, we knew they were evil and we didn’t…’

 ‘It was a decision he had to make himself,’ she says softly, hating how it sounds like an excuse.

 James hums into her shoulder, unconvinced. ‘What do I – what can I _say_ to him, when he’s – he’s been through…’

 ‘Just be his friend,’ she tells him. ‘Just be his friend, like always. He’s here now. He’s not going back.’

 When they re-enter the room she sees James square his jaw and make himself be brave and she is for a moment so painfully proud of him. Then he strolls up to the bed, prods a half-asleep Sirius in the knee and says ‘There seems to be a dozy git in my bed.’

 Sirius opens one eye and squints up at him but declines to move. ‘Finders keepers. Get your own.’

 ‘How’s it you get to usurp me from my own duvet, Padfoot?’

 ‘S’cause your mum likes me better,’ Sirius mumbles, managing a shade of a grin.

 Dorea puts the spare clothes down in a heap on the ancient armchair and wishes them both goodnight. The chorus of sleepy thanks that follows her out of the room makes her heart ache, though not necessarily in a bad way.

 

-/-

 

She writes to Dumbledore, because she knows someone has to be informed. The Blacks have friends in high places, and if they start agitating to have Sirius back while he’s still a minor for another six months, Dorea will _fight_ them, and she’ll need all her allies in place.

 

_Dear Professor,_

_I hope you are enjoying a restful summer._

_I am writing to inform you that Sirius Black is staying with us, and will be for the remainder of the summer and for all future school holidays until he leaves Hogwarts. Please have any communication from the school addressed to him here._

She pauses, and thinks complicated thoughts about trust and confidences, and what she owes to Sirius, and what she owes to Dumbledore. She thinks about how bad this could have been – how bad it _was_ , God, the state of him when he turned up, soaking wet and still bleeding and scarcely able to walk another step. She needs the school and the authorities to know that she is deadly serious when she says that boy will go back to his parents over her dead body.

 

_He arrived here late on Saturday night in some distress. I treated symptoms of malnutrition and exhaustion, as well as wounds left by the Flagello curse. I cannot confirm use of the Cruciatus curse, but he has displayed muscle cramps and shivering consistent with victims of that curse. I tell you this in confidence, because Sirius is very reluctant to tell anyone precisely what happened, but you will understand from these details that it is imperative he should not be returned to the Black household._

She’d asked him, when the cuts on his back wouldn’t close with a simple Healing charm, and he’d mumbled that it had been ‘ _flagello,_ ’ a curse she’s never even heard of, though she saw a lot of things when she was a full time Healer. Sirius is sixteen, and he’s already seen more Dark magic than she has in her lifetime.

She’d been able to ease the wounds a bit with potions, had warmed him up and fed him and given him dry clothes but it had still been days before he fully stopped shaking, before his muscles moved without stiffness. And it hardly makes a difference, because God knows they hurt him badly enough either way, but Charlus’ knowledge of the law makes him particularly anxious about the difference between ordinary Dark magic and Unforgiveables. He’d taken Sirius aside while they were having breakfast and asked him very calmly and very seriously whether his family had used the Cruciatus curse. Sirius had smiled his sharp false smile and said brightly, ‘Mr Potter, I make a point of not listening to anything my mother says; I’d be deaf by now if I didn’t.’ And he’d dodged sideways out of Charlus’ eye line and snagged a piece of toast from James’ plate on his way out into the garden.

Dorea thinks about Sirius’ smile and how it usually works so well to get him out of things he doesn’t want to talk about, how he wears it like armour. A boy less skilled at smiling and lying than Sirius Black could surely not have endured that household for so long.

She chews her lip as she turns back to the letter.

_I know there is a younger brother. Can you advise me on how best to proceed?_

It makes her feel sick to think of the younger brother, and she hasn’t been brave enough yet to ask Sirius whether his brother is in danger. As she writes, he and James are arguing good-naturedly over the best way to hang a hammock in the back garden, she can hear their bickering and laughter across the lawn.

 

_I am aware that in the current climate, legal proceedings against the Black family may not be practical, and I am not sure, anyway, that Sirius would want that._

She hasn’t asked him that either. But given that, bar the few details she managed to glean as she cleaned him up, he has hardly even explained what happened, even to James, she doesn’t think he’ll react well to the suggestion that he should report it to the Ministry.

_However, should his parents make any attempt to have him returned home against his will, I intend to oppose them, and I hope I can count on your support._

_Yours truly,_

_Dorea Potter._

-/-

 

It is some days later that Walburga Black’s head appears in the fireplace. Dorea has half a mind to throw a potion in her face, but Charlus puts a steadying hand on her arm and stands first, grim around the eyes.

‘Walburga,’ he says mildly, taking his pipe from his mouth. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

‘Is he here?’ snaps Mrs Black, peering rudely around the kitchen.

Charlus folds his arms and doesn’t bother to crouch in order to talk to her. ‘Yes, Sirius is here,’ he concedes. 

‘I might have known,’ she sneers, and launches into a diatribe about blood traitors that Dorea would have halted with her wand had it not been for two boys, very muddy and carrying broomsticks, clattering through the front door. Sirius is grinning, though still pale and too hollow in the cheeks, but he freezes dead at the sound of his mother’s voice.

‘There you are, you nasty little…’

Sirius opens his mouth as if to shoot back matching vitriol but chokes on the words, breaking into violent trembling.

‘Take him out of here, James,’ Charlus says sharply, and James takes his friend by both shoulders and just steers him straight back out the door.

 

-/-

 

She hears the tiles scrape and realises with a sigh that they are on the roof.

 For heavens’ sake. There are fourteen rooms in this house, but apparently none of them have been deemed a sufficiently exciting venue for James and Sirius to inhabit, so they’re on the _roof_ with whatever mischief they’re currently engaged in. If she hadn’t had to go into the attic for the spare tablecloth, they might have got away with it, she thinks wryly, and decides that the stack of dirty dishes by her kitchen sink are just the thing for two overactive teenagers who need something to keep them busy.

She’s just about to bang on the ceiling with a broom and yell at them to get down at once when she realises she can hear their conversation, and the tone, for once, isn’t of cheerful antagonism.

 James, anxious and earnest, is saying ‘Pads, “blood traitor” is just, you know, not even a _thing_. It’s not even…’

 ‘ _I_ know that,’ Sirius’ voice says, tense.

‘You’ve got to know none of that fucking _mental_ stuff was your fault, like, your family are just….’ 

‘Yeah, I know,’ Sirius says again, sounding unhappy.

‘I mean… we knew they were mental, soon as they sent that Howler first year about how all Gryffindors were filth and a disgrace to the name of wizard.’

‘Ever the charming way with words, my mother,’ Sirius says gloomily.

James clears his throat and adds, a little louder, an announcement ‘I mean, if you’re a “blood traitor,” I _definitely_ am. And Moony’s, like, whatever the next level of that is, given, well, you know…’

There’s a slight scuffle overhead as though one of them has shoved the other one, and she can’t help thinking that, though he’s her son and she loves him, James deserves that.

‘Alright then, alright!’ James laughs, and then he sobers again. ‘The point is, you’re well out of that.’

 ‘Yeah,’ Sirius replies, sad and resigned.

 She feels bad about eavesdropping, after that, so she creeps away. She gives them twenty minutes, pretending not to have noticed where they are, in the hope that they might be of some comfort to one another if they finish the conversation. Then she marches out into the front garden, looks up and performs a comical double-take before calling them down and setting them to work in the kitchen.

 


End file.
